How Small, Consistent Efforts Create Real Change

If you talk to most succesful investors the mantra they constantly espouse is small sums invested regularly make moer difference than occasional larger deposits. Investing £100/ month for 20 years is very likely to beat investing a £24,000 lump sum – assuming you can get your hands on that sort of money in teh first place. It’s time in the market that matters. The patter goes that time in the market beats timing the market.

Well I think the same principles can be applied to health and well-being. By now most people know that meditation, mindfulness and breathing practices are beneficial to mental health. It’s no longer the domain of the new age, spirituial or religious. But it’s not easy. It can be uncomfortable and it’s easy to get disheartened when your mind wanders – as it will – after a frustratingly short period of time. Twenty minutes can seem like an eternity.

Don’t be disheartened though.. New research suggests that whilst profound changes in brain structure can occur with prolonged meditation sessions, sessions as short as 30 seconds can have a useful positive effect on the day ahead. Literally just taking time out to truly focus on your breath, to truly enage with yourself, to truly recognise your internal state…. microdosing mindfulness. It can be massively beneficial to get you through stressful times where downtime is in short supply.

I’ve been thinking more and more that this can be applied to musculoskeletal pain as well. Sometimes I’ll get patients in who have been presecribed a long list of exercises that may take 45 minutes or more, to do daily to help with rehab. While this amount of rehab will most likely help in the long run, its quite intimidating, encroaching into a busy day, and so can end up cast aside. So why not bring micro-dosing into the physical rehab space as well? One to two minute done daily, consistently is achievable and will surely beat 30 minutes sporadically, maybe once a week…

My particular achilles heel is neck pain  (if you’ll excuse the mixed anatomical metaphor). At its worst it travels up my neck and into full blown tension headaches. Acupuncture does help, but poor posture reactivates it over time. I have a little 10 minute movement and stretching routine that gets done in theory every night, but in reality 5 times a week. On top of that I’ve started microdosing additional movements on the daily dog walk. One – clutching my arms behind my back to open up my chest. Two – holding the dog lead in both hands then circling the lead over my head to behind my back. These two simple movements that I incorporate into my daily life have so far held these headaches at bay for the longest time in many years… just by incorporating two movements into something I’m already doing.

So if you have pain that keeps re-occuring its worth thinking what you might be doing that exacerbates it and what could you “micro-dose” to stop it?